TOWM quote of the day comes from John Scalzi, who has a laugh-out-loud funny rant about the anachronism of the “Big Three” science fiction - SCIENCE FICTION - rags refusing to accept electronic submissions here at the end of the second decade since the internet went mainstream. It’s a general takedown of the feeble arguments one of them posts, actually.
Fantasy and Science Fiction Mag: In our office, it’s very inconvenient to pass around an electronic submission from one reader to another. Scalzi: Why? Because you’re trying to lift a CRT from one desk to another?
Right.
I refer you to the original post for the play-by-play; it’s worth your time for sheer entertainment value. Let me just say for my own part that in addition to Scalzi’s excellent arguments, I think there comes a time, whether or not it’s directly in your narrow interest to do so, when you just adapt to change - just ’cause humans keep up with the Joneses. Just ’cause doing anything else will say something about you. Growing up, for example, I had a next-door neighbor who used to special order Neil Diamond albums on 8-track. Back in the 80s, you could still do that. They didn’t sell them in stores anymore, but you could write the record company and get one of the limited supply that had been pressed for albums that were popular enough. But WHY? It’s just pig-headed. Ostensibly it was because he had a beat-up old Aston Martin that he loved working on that came equipped with an 8-track. But this had to have been an excuse for a quirk, really. If your hobby is tinkering with this old car, then surely an obvious “tinker” you might indulge in is getting rid of the bloody dinosaur tape player? Sure, if all you like is Neil Diamond (stop and ponder for a second…), and Mr. Diamond comes out with an album every year (in the 70s and 80s, anyway), maybe skipping a year here and there, then I guess it technically doesn’t pass cost-benefit muster to replace all your 8-tracks with CDs. I just think … well, you just kinda do it anyway at some point. If you wake up in 1983, take a look around, and notice that absolutely noone is using 8-tracks anymore, then it’s just polite to chunk your collection and start over.
And that’s how I feel about people who don’t like email, electronic documents, etc. There’s a whiff of rudeness - as in lack of consideration - about it. If you wake up in 2009, and correspondence is all done with bits and bytes, then you need to correspond that way too - if for no other reason than it’s a dick thing to do to make the world play with paper and pens for you when it clearly doesn’t want to. And in some strange way that goes even for things that don’t directly matter to anyone else. My advisor, for example, keeps a paper-and-pencil date calendar, and every time we make an appointment he gets out a pencil and flips in his datebook and then writes down by hand when the appointment is. And I realize this is in some sense unfair, but my honest emotional reaction to watching this every week is not too different from if he’d just grabbed a handkerchief, honked his nose, and sat there looking at it for a bit before stuffing the wad back in his pocket. He can do what he likes, of course, but … well, it’s 2009, they’ve invented the iPhone, he’s a Mac person, can’t he just buy one and use iCal like the rest of us? (Or some equivalent contraption if the admittedly steep monthly fee gets in his way?)
Like it or not there is a kind of collective sensibility about things. That’s why, for example, walking around with a pocket watch is a fashion statement. They’re rare now, and more convenient alternatives have been invented and embraced - so if you’re walking around digging in your pocket and flipping the top off of a wind-up toy to tell time, then that’s a conscious choice made because you want to influence how people think about you. It’s no different from wearing a fedora, or suspenders, or speaking in hip-hop slang, etc. We all adopt affectations for reasons of flair - to mark ourselves off from everyone else. (And actually, the pocket watch thing used to be one of mine in high school - I love old clocks!) The point is just that it’s no use pretending that there is utility in these choices. Saying “I just can’t get used to this email nonsense” is about as plausible as saying “I just never could get the hang of these silly wristwatches.” Or “but there’s just something special about an 8-track.” Or “no, dog, ‘dis jus’ how I talk.” It’s affectation - all of it - and you’re either around people who think it’s cool, or you’re not.
And I’m just one of those people who doesn’t think getting flustered by electronic documents is cute. It’s exasperating, actually, it just makes you look retarded, and I’m all for Scalzi’s refusal to submit stories to the “Big Three” until they get with the program.
Humans have a problem with big numbers. To a lot of people, the $100million that President Obama is proposing to cut from the Federal Budget sounds like a giant whack. In reality, it’s pretty small potatoes. Here’s a clever video that really puts it in perspective. I would like to do my small part to help it make its way around the internet.
There is an interesting but misguided post on io9 about a new show on Fox called Reincarnation. It speculates that this show is a watershed that means the end of TV SciFi as we know it.
Um, probably not. SciFi fans live with a not wholly unjustified seige mentality that they tend to take a little bit too far - and this is an example of “taking it too far.” Sure, there isn’t as much SciFi on TV as straight demographic research would suggest there should be, and sure, what SciFi does make it onto TV does have an annoying tendency to get made by people who confess in interviews that they hate SciFi. But meagre though our slice of the pie often seems to be, I don’t think it’s shrinking. Certainly it’s not shrinking in any unprecedented way that points to terminal decline for the genre!
But Charlie Jane Anders is annoyed enough by Reincarnation to think this might be The Big One - and I think it’s interesting why.
The show is apparently Dead Again: the TV Series. It involves a Mulder/Scully team consisting of a professional “Regression Therapist” - someone who takes people back into their PAST LIVES looking for the source of emotional trauma - and a disbelieving ex-police detective sidekick. Only this time Mulder is a girl and Scully is a guy, but no matter. Needless to say, past lives are real, and these episodes are all human interest/detective stories with the twist that there’s a supernatural element. A superficial glance at scenes from the pilot suggest that the supernatural element is just a schtick: there isn’t anything to put the “Speculative” in “Speculative Fiction” in this one at all.
That, of course, is the complaint - to wit, that this is the same kind of crap show generation algorithm that spawned the deplorable Quantum Leap. Take a SciFi premise, remove anything that could be remotely appealing to SciFi fans, and produce in its place a sentimental cliche porta-potty show that belongs on Lifetime, but market it to scifi fans anyway.
It’s easy to see why I’m not worried that Reincarnation is some kind of watershed. Quantum Leap came and went just ahead of a general explosion in SciFi programming in the 90s; it didn’t kill anything (except possibly its fans’ imaginations - but that was a mercy killing). The premise isn’t exactly the same, but the effect probably will be.
The thing is, detective novels and shows frequently resort of importing psychic themes to liven things up. There are countless examples of this being tried - and it never, ever works. And it just never will work, and that’s becuse the detective and psychic genres are simply not compatible.
Detective fiction serves to empower its readers - to make them feel more in control of the world around them. There are essentially three strategies you can take with this - let’s call them the Rationalist, Scientific, and Badass strategies. The Rationalist strategy is Agatha Christie and her many imitators. The detective hears the story from a couple of people, sits down for a while, thinks real hard, and figures the whole damn thing out. The message is that no matter what it is, it works according to the world’s logic, and any attempts to hide things will spawn inconsistencies that you can always spot if you just pay enough attention. The Scientific strategy is Sherlock Holmes and modern police procedurals. The message is that no matter what it is, it left little microfibers and scratches and some sort of lab test will tell you exactly what’s going on. The Badass strategy is Philip Marlowe and film noir. This is the coolest subgenre, being the most cynical - but even though the hero gets beat up a lot and left for dead, he always has a clear street smart, an uncanny ability to see through bullshit, that sets him apart from his world. The world may be rougher in noir, but the hero is still gifted with insight.
No matter which of these strategies a work of detective ficiton takes, it should be obvious that throwing in psychic elements brings the whole thing down. It’s no fun if the detective is handed the solution on a platter! Nor does it soothe anyone’s need to make rational sense out of the world if your crucial information all comes from somewhere the very nature of which you don’t understand. All psychic phenomena do in detective fiction is call attention to the fact that it’s the author doling out clues in a way that’s convenient for his story - precisely the meta-textual information that we have to be distracted from if we’re to believe in the story. It really is like pulling back the curtain on Oz and showing us that there’s a machine.
It’s also easy to see why this inherently unstable genre blend gets tried so often, despite virtually no record of success (OK - The X-Files - but you gotta admit that calling X-Files a detective show is pushing it). It just smacks of network executive out of touch gimmicks. They think “Well, ‘mystery’ is contained in ‘mysterious,’ so why don’t we have a mystery that’s REALLY mysterious!” Pedestrian fucking wankers.
io9 Commenter jokono gets it right:
Yeah, like Quantum Leap. Or… BSG. To me, BSG signaled the end of scifi.
BSG is, of course, the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. And I totally agree. If TV SciFi dies and you want a plausible culprit for what killed it, look no further. BSG was a for-real trojan horse. It pretended to be SciFi so hard that it convinced a lot of us that it really was. It wasn’t a totally worthless ride. The first season and a half had some of the best and most consistent character interaction I’ve seen on a show of any genre ever. I was really in love with BSG for a while for that reason. But it was never SciFi, and unfortunately an awful lot of people kept hoping against hope that it would be long enough to make it to the final episode, which is just a giant spiders web that traps genre fans like flies and feeds them to the Evil Hippie Spider wholesale. We’re talking every retarded brainfart from the late 1960s in one giant technicolor bong, ladies and gentlemen: we decide to give up civilization as a bad mistake and never dream again. There is NOTHING less “SciFi” than that!
Reincarnation, as far as I can tell, doesn’t hate science fiction fans, doesn’t want to punish them for being science fiction fans, and isn’t marketing itself as hard scifi. It’s insipid, maybe, but it isn’t malicious. I wouldn’t worry about it. Every one of the approximately 6900 times this experiment in genre-blending has been tried, it has failed, and not with a bang, but a whimper. I see no reason to expect this one will fare any differently. If you want to worry about something, worry about Galactica. Or maybe Star Trek.
Now that I’ve finished all three of the films in the new Wallander series, I can make cogent comparisons. In order, and with all ratings out of 4 stars:
(1) Sidetracked - ** - This is the one I wrote about a bit already. Its strenghts are its weaknesses. The production values are first-rate, but they also get in the way. Television shouldn’t look like a film school project. The solution is a little too obvious. Now, I understand that the schtick in the Wallander novels (from reading on the internets - I’ve never cracked one myself, you understand) is that the police can be a little slow, and they make mistakes. They’re human. Apparently Mankell achieves this by keeping the reader both ahead of and a bit behind the police. Fine. But this one just lacks any kind of subtlety. I knew the bad guy (note: not the same as the killer) shortly after he opened the door. And alright, I missed guessing the killer - but that’s my fault for being thick. I would wager a guess that 65-70% of the people who watch this guess within about 45seconds of screen time of meeting him who it is. But the real trouble with this one is that the political point weights the whole thing down. Which is a shame, really, because even though it was written by a Socialist for a Socialist audience, it’s one of those points of reference where Libertarians and Socialists overlap. The gist is basically that the world is a giant and complicated place, and things don’t always work out, and that the most of the evil in the world starts with people thinking that they are above the law - stepping outside their boundaries. The only thing a decent guy can do is just find out what he’s good at and do that to the best of his ability - though sometimes this can feel like batting for the wrong team. Of course I agree with all that - but did they have to make such a sledgehammer out of it? So this one’s bad in all the ways that it’s good. A little restraint would have helped.
(2) Firewall - ** - Starts out with one of the best narrative hooks I’ve seen on TV in a while. I can’t remember a time when I’ve so much wanted to know just what the hell is going on. This one’s fast-paced and action-packed and keeps you involved so well that it takes you until about 70% of the way through to realize what a mess the plot is. Unfortunately, way back near the begining when they still had you well distracted, the story walks to the edge of the cliff of literary respectability and just takes a headlong plunge into the sea of the worst kind of unbelievable, uninformed, impossible-to-suspend-my-disbelief pulp fiction. The technical aspects of the series are so good that they get away with it for a while - but the plot is the skeleton of any story: can’t stand up without it. And this one is a real stinker. They can’t hide it from you forever, and by the time the episode is nearing an end you’re stifling giggles. I won’t give it away, just say that yes, the title “Firewall” indicates an internet conspiracy plot. In small-town Sweden. Why not?
(3) One Step Behind - **** - Fortunately, they took the time to film this one as well. It’s simply wonderful - from start to finish. Makes the whole series worth it. The frustrating thing about the other two episodes is that the potential is so obviously there. Kenneth Branaugh is of course a great actor, and he was born to play this role. And everyone else on cast is really good too. And even though the filmschool shots get really annoying (mostly because they’re more noticeable on television than in the theater), at least some effort is put into making it all look pretty. But it seems like there’s always something lurking about to sabotage this series - and it managed to ruin the other two. Honestly - it wasn’t absent in this one either. The plot doesn’t make a terrible amount of sense, and while we get one or two of the big questions answered by the time the credits roll, we’re a far cry from knowing all we want to know. It’s easy to forgive here, though, because it may well just be by design. This one is partly about obsession - Wallander is driven to find out who killed one of his cowokers. That killer happens to have killed a lot of other people as well, but by the end of the story we really only have a good idea about why he’s killed the coworker. That’s believable: Wallander is a police officer, his job is to bring the guy in, not expose his motive. So he brought the guy in (or, erm, got him killed). Mission accomplished - and if he didn’t ferret out the motive in the other cases, exactly, well, that’s because he had no personal interest. That will, of course, be a deal-breaker for a lot of people, but I rather like unresolved endings.
Overall, this series has huge amounts of potential. I’m a bit mystified at all the sabotage, I have to say. Is it deliberate? Is there some greater point to putting together a brilliant series only to dynamite each episode in some way? I just don’t know. As Brett Ashley might say, it’s pretty to think they’re doing it on purpose - but my hunch is that these flaws are in the original novels, and they’re the fault of an author who can’t decide whether to be John LeCarre or Ian Fleming, but who is in fact Colin Dexter with a social conscience. No matter - I’ve enjoyed watching them. The BBC says it plans to make three a year until they stop being popular. They’ve got my attention for next year.
So Michael Jackson’s gone - and there’s really only two routes you can take on commentary. Either he’s an immoral freak, and good riddance, or it’s worth acknowledging that he was a great pop star and stellar performer in spite of everything. I’ll opt for this latter.
Look, all kinds of famous people are shady characters. If this is suddenly a problem for you in Michael Jackson’s case, then it’s completely out of the blue. Whoever you are, you regularly enjoy music from all kinds of people you wouldn’t share a bus seat with. All that’s going on in Michael Jackson’s case is that it got a lot more publicity. And the fact that it got so much more publicity says everything you need to know about how talented he was.
I have a special soft spot for him, though, because he punches a hole in two kinds of 60s-era hipster baby-boomer vanity. And there is nothing, NOTHING, in the world more satisfying than putting hippies in their place.
First, he puts the lie to this increasingly annoying argument from baby boomers that you’re not allowed to dislike the Beatles because they’ve stood the test of time. See, apparently if anything at all stands the test of time, it’s ipso facto great art and above criticism. It isn’t the argument that I have a problem with so much as the fact that the people peddling this don’t really mean it. If they meant it, of course, then Michael Jackson is a greater artist than John Lennon could ever dream of being, because he outsold, out-influenced, and will in general outlast the Beatles (and certainly Lennon’s solo career). Ask how many people have heard of Sgt. Pepper and how many of Thriller, and the numbers are impressive in both cases, but there is a clear winner, AND it happens to be the right one (score one for the wisdom of crowds after all). But you will never, ever get anyone who lived through the 60s to admit that Michael Jackson is, on their own terms, a better artist than John Lennon, and that is because they are simply LYING when they offer this argument. ‘Nuff said.
Second, he wrote great Disco music. Of course, the people who say there was never even one - not a single - good Disco record are the same people who think John Lennon was Beethoven reincarnated, so these are really two prongs of the same attack. Fact is, there was some solid gold in with all the crap, and Off the Wall is one such example.
First - we should absolutely board one of their suspicious ships. They are bluffing, and calling them on it is the best thing that could happen for all concerned. I don’t expect that there are actually any weapons shipments on them (no doubt that’s “Plan B” - complaining to the UN about harassment), and yes, that would be embarassing. But it would also expose the bluster as empty, and that would make the whole thing worth it.
Second - the only reason they are bluffing like this is because President Obama is a ball-less wuss. All the speculation about how this has to do with a succession issue may or may not be true - but IF it’s about a succession issue, then only because they needed a pretext of some kind to start sabre-rattling, and that happened to be now. The real reason, the underlying reason, is that they sized Obama up, realized he hasn’t got the guts to stand up to them, and decided to make a play. They’ve judged correctly and made the right move from their perspective … unfortunately.
And no, this doesn’t have anything to do with Obama’s reaction to the Iran thing. I happen to think he’s making the right call there. There is nothing of consequence going on, and it’s anyway none of our business. Whichever of the two hand-picked clowns ends up winning that election, no change in Iranian foreign policy will result.
If you heard that the BBC’s new Wallander series is Inspector Morse with better production values and in Sweden, you’ve largely heard right. And if that appeals to you, then you’ll probably like it. But lest you miss the moral, I’ll give it away: production values are important, but they aren’t everything.
I embrace, applaud, am down with and otherwise approve of the recent trend of bringing cinematic production values to television. But here’s the twist: television has a lot of advantages over cinema, and if you don’t know what those are, you miss the boat and are working in the wrong medium. Inspector Morse was great TV. These Wallander films are good films that happen to be shown on TV. That difference is important.
Here are some pieces of life wisdom I picked up from watching Wallander, and making the obvious comparisons with Inspector Morse, in no partcular order.
- Apparently it’s not just the flag that’s yellow and blue in Sweden - EVERYthing is. And I don’t mean just the yellow fields and blue skies. No, I mean when scenes fade in Sweden they go blue and then come out yellow. Except for the times they fade out yellow and come in blue. You get my point. Techniques like this are either subtle or they’re boring, and that line is drawn differently on TV than in the movies. For the approximately 2 people who missed the camera color art going on, they helpfully throw in some bizarre lamps and Volvos.
- There’s a difference between great acting and being the character in question, and one is for the movies and the other is for TV. What Kenneth Branaugh does as Wallander is great acting. What John Thaw did as Inspector Morse was being the character.
- The “detectives are human too - they’re slow, they miss points and make mistakes” schtick is great. Thumbs up, I love it. But it is possible to take it too far. Even if the detective stumbles along for the most part, it’s still nice when, in the end, he does manage to put the pieces together through an insight here and a good gut feeling there.
- It is easier to forgive the writer for making things convenient for his pet social statement in movies than it is on television.
- On television, to a greater extent than in movies, it is important that we like and identify with, rather than pity or otherwise look down on, the main character.
To people in the know, it will be obvious that I prefer the Inspector Morse series to the Wallander series, though not on all points. People in the know will probably also agree with me. But people in the know will enjoy Wallander too, and so I recommend it to them.
OK, this is officially the worst idea in the world, and it’s made in Japan. Some members of the LDP (the party that puts the “one” in “one-party system” in Japan’s case - think Sweden’s Socialdemokratarna on steroids … and in the mafia) are openly discussing the idea of trashing cash as a means of fighting deflation.
Mind-boggling, isn’t it? I mean, sure, there’s a kind of science fiction appeal to living in a cashless society. Cash is clutter, and I myself haven’t actually paid for anything in cash in, oh, at least since February. (FULL DISCLOSURE: I did try inserting cash into a vending machine recently, but it couldn’t read the crumpled bill and so I ended up having to use my credit card instead.) But cash is also anonymity. Want to make a transaction without necessarily broadcasting to the government what you’re up to? Yeah, try that on a national credit network. Cash is also independence. When the network infrastructure goes down? Try paying with a card then. Wanna sell something (say, bags of ice after a natural disaster) on the spot or even under the table? Yeah - prlly. can’t do it with a credit card.
But what really gets me about this is that the MPs are openly admitting that they want this so that they can engage ineven morecurrency manipulation. I mean honestly, what’s the problem? The power to tax isn’t enough for them? These fuckers are saying right out in public and on the national news that they want the ability to do high-precision looting on savings accounts. That is very, very scary. Not to mention proof that Japan is not a free country in any meaningful sense. But then, we knew that already.
Of course, with the US now pursuing the very policy that Japan is now openly admitting “wasn’t enough” (some of us would say “never a good idea to begin with”) - namely, the magic 0% (or functional equivalent) Federal Funds Rate - far be it from me to get on a nationalist high horse about this. If Japan does this, there will be no shortage of politicians this side of the Pacific with the same wet dream.
TOWM quote of the day comes from Paul Darrow (you know, Paul “you’re him, aren’t you?” Darrow - guy who played Avon in Blakes 7) who, asked about the possibility of a Blakes 7 remake at a convention in 2006 or so, replies:
It’s already been re-done. Has anyone seen Serenity?
A line worthy of Avon, really. Unfortunately, I’m now obligated to note that my source for this is a random post on Facebook from someone who was there when he said it. So, you know, it might be true.
On the up side, in the same thread someone points out a scene in the Firefly episode “The Train Job” where Jayne shoots Crow - saving Mal’s life - what might just maybe be a Blakes 7 reference.
MAL Nice shot!
JAYNE I was aimin’ for his head.
Here, as it happens, is Avon in season one’s “Orac”:
BLAKE Good shot, Avon.
AVON I was aiming for his head.
Yeah, looks like stock dialogue to me too. Could show up in any show. The idea that it’s a reference hinges on the idea that Mal is Firefly’s version of Blake and Jayne is Firefly’s version of Avon. It’s an interesting idea.
IFF (stressing that second “f”) Firefly really is such a transparent ripoff of Blakes 7 that all the characters have Blake analogues, then there’s certainly no doubt that Mal is Blake. And Zoe is a really good fit for Jenna, too. But is Jayne Avon? I can see the case. Avon was the most selfish, least moral character on Blakes 7 - the one who was very definitely in it for profit and profit only. So on that level it works. And then there’s the matter of Jayne’s intelligence. On the one hand, since Avon was clearly the most intelligent member of Liberator’s crew where Jayne is easily the least intelligent (ah, but is he really?) on Firefly, you could say they were opposites. On the other hand, it’s been pointed out before that opposites are alike in all respects but one, so the difference here only serves to highlight how otherwise the same they are. Back on the first hand again, intelligence was pretty crucial to who Avon was, so this isn’t really a parameter you can flip. But to go back to the other hand once more, maybe Jayne is a parody of Avon.
OK, so that’s three pretty good fits.
So who’s Kaylee? Off the top of my head, she’s Cally, and not just because of the name similarity. She’s the one most native to the quadrant, is also the “brainy,” technically inclined female, and - the cherry on top - there are hints (never very strong) that Jayne likes her. It helps that she’s the character that seems the least thought-out when the series starts (she seems more like a device for Whedon’s “I’m a feminist, but still realistic about how girls are” vanity) but grows into an identifiable individual in short order - no doubt due in large part to the acrtess’ stage presence.
And I guess Sheperd is Gan. Big guy, calm, strong, mysterious and possibly (well, make that “definitely” in Gan’s case) violent past. Seems interesting at the outset of the show but doesn’t really develop into anything; writers don’t seem to know where to go with him. Least useful member of the crew - definitely candidate for “most likely to die in the course of the series.”
Wash? I’m for Vila. Loyal enough but a bit of a coward. Loveable rogue. Has one outstanding and useful skill and boy is he good at it! Largely exists for comic relief.
And … done. But then there are the obvious problems of what to do with Simon and River. We could pair them with the computers - in which case Simon is Zen and River is Orac. It helps that we were never really sure whether to count Zen and Orac as full members of the crew: Simon and River are likewise of ambiguous status. And not just in that it’s not clear whether they really fit in - but also in that they’re peripheral characters in a lot of ways - there to further the plot when and as needed more than as interesting people in their own right. This is especially true of River - the least convincing character of the show. Little more than a walking gimmick to my mind. And, well, who can really say different of Orac?
OK, so this is working out a bit better than I thought when I started. I thought to get about as far as Wash and give up - say something like “Of course, the fact that I can’t decide whether it’s Simon or Wash who’s Vila or Zen - or if maybe it isn’t Jayne that’s Gan - means that we’re forcing pegs into holes here.” But actually, I’m pretty satisfied with this analysis. Which doesn’t say a lot of Whedon’s originality, really. No, these characters aren’t perfect matches, and yes, there’re a lot of significant differences between each and his counterpart, and yes, those differences are great enough that calling Firefly a blatant copy of Blakes 7 would be A LIE. But it really is looking more and more like Firefly pretty directly took Blake as a template - flipped some bits here and there, shuffled some characteristics between the leads, smuggled in a few ideas from elsewhere and … rightclick, open window, BAM! new show!
In which case, kudos to Paul Darrow for saying it out loud. And - to get me back where I started - maybe there are grounds for thinking that scene a Blake reference after all. If so, I’m sincerely glad to hear it. As I’ve said before, I wouldn’t mind so much about Firefly riffing on Blake if we got some nods now and then. The wider world doesn’t even have to notice - just some occasional winks at us Blake fans that say he hasn’t forgotten his roots. Maybe we are getting them, and it’s my fault for not noticing.
The guy who made the claim says there are two other such duplicated scenes but he couldn’t point to them from memory. So - looks like I’ve found an excuse to rewatch Firefly! Not that I, um, have time to do that right now…
The number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people killed in bias-motivated incidents increased by 28 percent in 2008 compared to a year ago, according to a national coalition of advocacy groups.
And how many were there this year?
29.
So, a “28% increase” means that there were 22.7 - aka 23 - the year before. Interestingly, the group in question’s own pdf report claims 21 LGBT-related hate-slayings in 2007, which, by my admittedly hetero-normative white male math, is actually a 38% increase over the year before. GODS’ WOUNDS that’s a jump!
So what accounts for this rash outbreak of anti-gay hateful slayings? Why the sudden spike in object-of-affection-freedom-practitioner martyrdom? The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (where “Violence” means “violence against LGBT persons”) reckons it’s backlash against increased discussion of gay rights issues during the presidential campaign:
[New York City Anti-Violence Coordinator Sharon] Stapel theorized that at least some of last year’s violence was backlash against issues that arose during the during the presidential campaign. She cited debates about same-sex marriage, the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and federal legislation that would ban employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as possible flash points.
But the actual cause is, of course, bad statistics. As their report’s own math error indicates, really. See, if there were 23 people brutally slain for being gay in 2007 compared with 29 this year, 6 additionals this year only represents a 28% increase. But if there were merely 21, then 8 additionals is a 39% increase. You get the idea. If I give you one Jolly Rancher and I only have two, you’ve got 50% of my stash. If I happened to have 4, 25% - ETC. Small population sizes mean even the slightest change spawns percentage drama. But the truth is that 29 people probably got killed for wearing red completely by accident in the wrong neighborhood last year. Or for resisting an armed robbery. Or making fun of someone’s truck mods. Or any other number of hugely unlikely scenarios. There are 300million people living in the United States. If 4% of them are gay, then 29 out of 12million got killed for their orientation. In percentage drama that implies that your chances of being targeted in a murder on account of your gayness in any given year are less than 0.000002%. Statistically speaking, it’s a virtual impossibility.
Statistically speaking, therefore, it is time for groups like the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs to stop getting media attention. The numbers are clear: there is no epidemic of anti-gay killings in this country. In statistical terms, they don’t even exist. They are on a par with my answering your question “what time is it?” with “but I’m not selling pink doorknobs this week!”
Some comedy from the report:
One of the most frightening aspects of hate violence is that it feels very personal and difficult to avoid.
You know, as opposed to all those other types of violence that don’t feel at all “personal and difficult to avoid.”
Enough already. There are plenty of actual problems that actually need solving in this country to deal with without inventing new ones. I’m sorry people get killed because they’re gay. I’m also sorry people get killed by dogs. I’m sorry all sorts of unpreventable things happen. Being sorry is about the extent of what I can do about it.
In fact, in 2007 - the same year that only 21 people got killed for being gay - 33 people were killed by dogs (source). 75million dogs killed 33 people, while it took 282million straights to kill 21 gays. From the same source, the number for 2008 was only 23. WOW. So there was a dramatic 31% DECREASE in dog-on-human murder over the same time period that there was a 28% (or 38% - depending on whether you use straight or gay math) increase in ’cause-they’re-gay murder. Whatever the National Coaltion of anti-(Dog-on-Human)-Violence Programs is doing, maybe the National Coaltion of anti-(Straight-on-LGBT)-Violence Programs could take a page from their plaype..playbook! End violent death!
Point being - violence happens. And it’s going to keep happening. And OK, it’s a free(-ish) country, and people can dedicate their lives to chasing statistical noise if they want to - but you’d think after years at this they’d pull out a calculator, run the obvious numbers, come to the obvious conclusion … and then go find something to do where they can actually make a difference.